Bug#694370: [kfreebsd] grub-probe -d fails on msdos logical partitions

[Steven Chamberlain]

Control: severity -1 important

Hi,

I just realised that msdos logical partitions are not listed in the
sysctl kern.geom.confxml on GNU/kFreeBSD.

grub-probe uses kern.geom.confxml to get a list of all partitions, and
this is why it is unable to detect and use a logical parition used as /boot

But even if GRUB could detect and use it, the kernel is also probably
unable to use such a partition as a root filesystem.

ZFS might be an exception to this.  GRUB can definitely use it as /boot,
and I *think* the kernel can use it as root even if the physical volumes
are logical partitions.

The FreeBSD distro itself does not allow installation to msdos logical
paritions at all.


So I don't think this is something fixable in the short term.  I'm
downgrading the severity and I think this must be noted in the release
notes or install guide as a limitation.

Adding a detection/warning of this situation into the installer is now
probably not possible, due to string freeze.

Regards,
-- 
Steven Chamberlain
steven at pyro.eu.org